Olympus 75mm f1.8 MFT Lens Price Announced

May 24, 2012

Olympus set the 75mm f/1.8 lens price tag on $899.99 and this lens will be available this Summer for the Micro Four Thirds mount. Olympus try to push its way up and gain more fans by releasing fast MFT interchangeable lenses. I personally some photographers who debated between DSLR and MFT, but chosen to go with DSLR because of the wider selection of fast prime lenses.

Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 75mm f/1.8 lens without the hood

The Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 75 mm f1.8 ED MSC is a compact fast portrait lens that incorporates premium ingredients from Olympus factory. The combination of a 150mm (35mm equiv.) and f1.8 (3.6mm equiv.) makes this lens a great prime lens for low-light shooting but mostly for those type of shots that you want to throw the background out of focus.

The 75mm f/1.8 was designed to be very compact in size and match the performance of today’s latest Micro Four Thirds cameras, the OM-D E-M5 among them.

Videographers will love this lens for a few reasons: fast and quiet AF, compact profile, manual focus ring for precision-touch focus and smooth blurry transition from one subject to the other. The 75mm telephoto portrait lens will certainly find its way into many MFT photographer’s bag. Planning to purchase the OM-D E-M5, you certainly need to consider to couple it with this new lens for top-notch image quality. As some of you may know, prime lenses aren’t zoom lenses. That means that the 75mm f/1.8 is a constant focal length that is equivalent to 135mm. Due to this fact, prime lenses, in almost all circumstances, yield a sharper and more contrasty image.

Olympus 75mm f1.8 for videographers

Although the 75mm lens is marketed as a high-grade MFT portrait lens, this lens can be among your favorite lenses for video shooting. The fast and quiet AF motor will help you get a smooth, fast and quiet operation that is a must if you want to capture the natural sound of your surroundings. This is especially critical with quiet environments like when shooting in nature, where the camera can easily pick up the AF motor noise.

The shallow depth of field of this lens will certainly compliment many type of video shooting subjects. Add the manual focus control ring to this mix and you can achieve some very creative scenes with smooth transition between one subject and another. AF not always provides the optimal results that videographers are looking for and they want to have better control over when and where to put their focus on.

The high optical qualities of this lens and the fast aperture can open more creative options for vidoegraphers who want to shoot videos in low-light (ie, night, indoors, concerts, candle light, indoor sports, etc.).

Olympus 75mm f1.8 Price and Availability

Olympus set the initial price for $899.99 (Estimated Street Price) and this lens should be available this Summer 2012.